


Adjusting Expectations

by lesyeuxverts



Series: Like a Flower, Bloom for Me [2]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Misunderstandings, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pining, Romantic Comedy, the course of love never did run smooth
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-07
Updated: 2016-12-14
Packaged: 2018-09-07 04:53:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8783935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesyeuxverts/pseuds/lesyeuxverts
Summary: Sequel to Exceeding Expectations. Newt tries to deal with what happened between him and Percival Graves. (He isn't very good at figuring it all out.)





	1. Chapter 1

It doesn’t take Newt very long to realise that he has never been this miserable in his relatively short, sometimes tormented, sometimes hopeless, life. It doesn’t take him very long to realise that he has absolutely no bloody idea where things went so wrong - how he had read Graves wrong, how he had misunderstood the situation so badly.

 

When he was at Hogwarts, and no-one talked to him - when he entered a room and heard people sniggering - when he failed at every spell he tried and couldn’t pretend that the professors weren’t comparing him to his brother - that hadn’t been as bad as this. 

 

When he had been healing after the incident with a Ukrainian Ironbelly, and his skin had felt hot and tight and he had hurt every time he moved - that hadn’t been as bad as this.

 

When he’d had the letter from the Auror office, during the war, when it had been three long weeks that Theseus was missing and every day until Newt had heard that he was safe felt weighted down with grief as heavy as an occamy’s egg - even that, Newt thinks, was not quite as bad as this.

 

He had felt - oh, incandescently good, earlier - when he had been in Percival Graves’ bed, when Percival had pulled him close for a last kiss and it seemed tender and sweet and full of promises, as though the things that had happened between them meant something.

 

Tina had taken Newt to her home, to familiar rooms and familiar faces, and though he had felt almost transparent - as if anyone who looked at him could see through his skin, could see past the physical covering of him to discover what he and Graves had done - neither Tina, nor Queenie, nor anyone else they saw, seemed to notice. They said nothing out of the ordinary, treated Newt like an old friend - how strange that was! - and the only difference now is that Newt is trying harder than usual to avoid eye contact with Queenie. 

 

He feels so different, he doesn't understand how he hasn't changed in some way that everyone can see.

 

The last thing he wants is for Queenie to see what he and Graves had done - the memory of it makes him blush. The sounds he had made, the way that he had begged - he does not think he could bear for anyone else to know about it. So he does not look at Queenie, and he does his best to keep his mind on other things, no matter how hard it is when flashes and wisps of memories keep drifting to the forefront. 

 

Instead of being put to bed with a mug of cocoa, as soon as all the animals have been fed - and the lamicorn, pacing the limits of its enclosure, soothed and reassured - Tina and Queenie declare it time for a celebration, and take Newt to the speakeasy they'd visited the last time he was in New York. Newt is not entirely sure what they are celebrating, but they both seem very happy and he goes along with them. It is easier, after all, to sit at their table and trace the rings left on the wood by countless glasses, than it is to lie in bed alone and think of what Newt and Percival had done.

 

Because Newt can only think of him as Percival, for all that he's never been invited to use the man's first name - it is impossible to think of those tender touches and sweet kisses and associate them with a man named Graves.

 

He doesn't know what to make of that last kiss, though, or of the way that Percival had looked at him just at the end when Newt was leaving with Tina - he had looked, Newt thinks, rather like he didn't like Newt very much just then. Perhaps he had been glad that Newt was leaving with Tina - that there was one less thing for him to sort out. Newt had seen how busy he was, how skilfully he had dealt with the aftermath of the crisis - it is not hard to know that an important man like Graves would have no time for Newt and would be grateful to Tina for taking him out of Graves’ way.

 

The surprising thing, if Newt is being honest with himself - and he may not have finished Hogwarts with ten NEWTs the way Theseus did, but he is not stupid - the surprising thing is that a man like Graves would pay any attention to Newt in the first place. He was tall and handsome and daring - dangerous and powerful - he had a lovely voice and a clever mind - he … he could be taking anyone to his bed, he could have anyone he wanted.

 

Queenie comes back from the bar with a tray of shots of giggle water, but she hardly seems happy - she is fuming, in fact, just as much as if she’d just taken a shot of pepper-up potion. 

 

“Oh, honey,” she tells Newt when he asks her what is wrong, “don’t ever change.”

 

“What was it?” Tina asks. “I’m sure there must be somebody in this place I haven’t arrested yet - or if I did already, I can do it again.”

 

“Oh, nothing illegal, honey - it was just the sort of talk between men that’s not very nice. They were talking about the Hollingworth girls, and … well, you know.”

 

Newt isn’t sure that he does know, and he says so.

 

“Newt, honey, you’d blush if I repeated what they said. Just, there are some men who like to make a sport of hunting women, and the way they like them is the purer the better.”

 

“Wh-what?”

 

Tina is more direct about it. “She means the sort of men who like to deflower a girl and then brag about it later,” she says. “They think that there’s something special about being the first one to have a woman.”

 

Queenie laughs and takes a shot of giggle water, hiccoughing with it. “Newt, honey, if your eyes get any wider they’ll roll right off the table! Surely you aren’t shocked to think that some men out there have a kink for that sorta thing? It’s hardly the sickest thing said in a place like this.”

 

Newt thinks that his face must be about as red as Queenie’s dress. He keeps his gaze firmly on the table - he must not make eye contact with a Legilimens, he must not think too loudly about the press of flesh and warmth of bodies moving together, he must not think about - about the way that Percival moved between his thighs, pressing hard against him - he breathes deep, through his nose, and shakes his head when Queenie tries to push a shot towards him.

 

She only shrugs when he tells her that he doesn’t drink. “Well, I think it’s sweet that you’re still so innocent - kind of the opposite of the fellows who get off on taking someone’s innocence away from her.”

 

Newt didn’t get all the academic honours that Theseus did, but he isn’t stupid. He doesn’t necessarily know a lot about the way the world works - that was one of the things that his fellow Hufflepuffs hissed at him sometimes in the common room, that he should learn something about how the world works and stop embarrassing them in public. So he isn’t very good with people, and when all the other students at Hogwarts were pairing off and snogging in dark corners and learning these things, he was either in the owlery or making friends with Fawkes or figuring out how far exactly he could make it into the Forbidden Forest before one of the professors came to find him and bring him back into the school proper. 

 

Newt doesn’t necessarily know these things, what people like to do in bed, but he isn’t stupid, and it doesn’t take long for Queenie’s words to sink in and a cold weight to settle in his stomach. It doesn’t take long for him to realise that it is the only reason for someone like Graves to be interested in someone like Newt. It doesn’t take long for him to go from feeling incandescent, like anyone who looks at him ought to be able to see that he’s a different person than he was a day ago, to feeling straight-out as miserable as he’s ever felt. 

 

The talk turns to other things and then Newt just sits there - Queenie is at the bar and Tina is in the loos - alone and listening to the soft jazz playing, the croon of the singer rising above the bustle and chatter in the room.

 

_ Like a flower, bloom for me _

_ Like an ocean, you kiss the sea _

_ Like a sunbeam, dance with me _

_ Like a lover, won't you loving be? _

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay in updating, my lovelies - had a few work things that kept me busy! Thank you all so much for the lovely comments and kudos, they are very much appreciated and help inspire me! I hope that you like this latest chapter too!

Newt, now that he knows how wonderful it is, has a hard time understanding why anyone does anything other than sex. He wants it all the time now - apart from a few embarrassing years at Hogwarts, he hasn’t ever had his body clamour for attention this often. (He is not quite sure what to do about it, in fact, and he doesn’t dare look Queenie in the eye most of the time - he isn’t sure he could bear it, if she knew what he was thinking. He had tried asking Jacob for advice, but he wasn’t able to put the words together in any sort of order that made sense, and the whole humiliating, bewildering, confusing conversation ended with Jacob clapping him on the shoulder and saying that if he didn’t like chocolate pinwheel pastries, he’d have to try the cherry strudel that he’s been making for the shop.)

 

Tina had talked Newt into staying in New York for a few more weeks - he told her that he’d better take the lamicorn somewhere safe, but she’d just pointed out that it was perfectly safe and happy in its little bubble of a habitat in Newt’s case, and at any rate, if he kept it with him for just a little longer, he’d have more time to make observations and he’d be able to write a better book. 

 

“Besides,” she said. “Jacob is having a hard time of it, I think - getting used to the magical world. He isn’t used to half the things we can do, and I think having you here to help him out would make a real difference.”

 

Newt isn’t sure that having a British wizard - here where the American laws are so backwards - be the one to further shatter the Statute of Secrecy is the answer, and he half-thinks that he wants to leave for the Berkshires immediately - to be as far as possible, as soon as possible, from the room where Graves was so kind to him - but he can hardly say no to Tina after all that she has done for him. He can hardly refuse to help Jacob, no matter what his own misgivings might be. 

 

It has been three days, and he hasn’t seen Graves yet - oh, he has caught the glimpse of what might have been his shadow, going down one of the corridors in the Ministry, and it had made Newt’s heart thud unaccountably hard in his chest, and - and that didn’t mean anything, really. 

 

He is in Tina’s office when he sees Graves again, properly, for the first time since - since the lamicorn incident. (Newt hardly knows what to call it - he supposes that “the lamicorn incident” will do.) Queenie had asked him to visit her at the Ministry for her lunch break, and afterwards he had stopped to see Tina, and to tell her that he was heading out to explore the zoo in Central Park - under quieter circumstances this time, he promises - and he hears a familiar cadence coming down the corridor, hard-heeled boots tapping out an impatient rhythm.

 

Newt tells himself that it is not Percival Graves - he tells himself that he has no reason to know the sound of Graves’ footsteps - he tells himself that he has no reason to blush when he sees Graves, if he sees him. 

 

He isn’t able to do much about the blush that rises to his face when Graves appears in the doorway.

 

“Porpentina, I was wondering if Mr. Scamander -” he stops short when he sees Newt. “Ah.”

 

There is an awkward lingering moment then, with Tina looking back and forth between Newt and Graves as if they have started to play table tennis and she is watching the ball bounce between them. 

 

All of Newt’s suspicions about Graves and his motives seem to crystallise into a hard, immobile lump lodged in his throat at exactly that second. He feels as though he has too many limbs, as though he doesn’t know where to put his hands, as though he is a marionette puppet with its strings collapsed, left to hang without any direction.

 

The past three days have been an agony of indecision, of wondering if anything had actually happened - if Newt had somehow, in some fantastic way, imagined it all. He cannot now look at Graves, cannot possibly make eye contact or look at him at all, really - he finds that he does not want to know what Graves is thinking. 

 

“I was … ah … coming to find out if Mr. Scamander was still in New York, or if he had already left for the Berkshires.”

 

Graves hardly sounds like he wants to be there - Newt wonders if he could dare to sneak a glimpse of him. He thinks that studying the scuff marks left on the floor near Graves’ feet is most likely the safer bet. 

 

Tina tells Graves that Newt has decided to stay to visit her and Queenie - “oh, for a few weeks at least,” she says when Graves asks how long he will stay. Newt doesn’t seem to have to contribute anything to a conversation that is moving along so satisfactorily without his input. 

 

Tina turns to look at Newt as soon as Graves is gone. “That was strange, don’t you think?”

 

Newt shrugs. He wonders if Tina has any of her sister’s Legilimency skills. “I don’t really know,” he says. “It wasn’t really him, I mean, for most of the time that I knew him, remember? But I’m sure that he’s perfectly nice.”

 

_ Perfectly nice _ doesn’t begin to cover what Newt thinks of Percival Graves. He hopes that he isn’t blushing and tries to surreptitiously brush his cheek with the back of his knuckles to find out. He isn’t warm to the touch - there’s that, at least. It is damnably unfair to have such fair skin, sometimes. 

 

That night, when he has emerged from his suitcase into a dark and quiet room - and that has been one consolation, these past three days, that his creatures have been invariably happy to see him and content in his presence - that night, he sits for a while before picking up quill and parchment for the first time in what seems like a very long time.

 

_ Dear Leta,  _ he writes,

 

_ I know that I’m not supposed to write to you ever again - and I won’t - but I thought that somehow putting the words down on paper might help anyhow. You were the only one who ever gave me good advice at Hogwarts - well, it was good advice some of the time at least - and you were the one who told me that I’d get my heart broken, one of these days.  _

 

_ I never thought you’d be right about this one, but I suppose I’ve met the man you were talking about, all those years ago. The only problem is that it seems like it was just a fling for him - a one-off sort of thing - and now I can’t even look at him. The only time he tried to see me, anyhow, he was just trying to figure out how long it would be until I was gone… _


	3. INTERLUDE (Graves)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for the very lovely comments and kudos! I hope that this little snippet will make you happy while you wait for Newt's next chapter. :)

Graves was well aware that his fantasies were ridiculous. One does not become the top Auror of the department without a certain understanding of human nature - and Newt Scamander, bless him from the tips of his tousled hair to the soles of his feet, was not a complicated character. He was hardly hard to predict in this respect. 

 

That did not, however, mean that Graves could not entertain certain fantasies - no matter how unrealistic they might be.

 

He thought of Newt coming to visit him, catching his eye and then blushing, and then looking at his own feet and stumbling his way through an explanation of how he had quite hoped that Graves would … teach him certain things.

 

(Graves would teach him, readily, and with pleasure - both his and Newt’s.)

 

He thought of Newt, too shy to say anything of his newly awakened desires, apparating straight into Graves’ bed and waiting for him there, his smooth skin bare and almost chaste under soft cotton sheets.  _ Almost _ chaste, but hardly so - there was always that hint of a blush, always that smile and implication that Newt wanted more than a refuge, more than a place to sleep. 

 

He thought of Newt, escaping Tina’s chaperonage, bumping into him during coffee break at the Ministry - they would dodge the usual slew of half-cocked porcelain bits and bobs that slammed their way around the place, the macaroons and the swan-folded serviettes, and duck into the nearest filing cupboard, and oh, how he would introduce Newt to pleasures of the body that he had not yet tasted.

 

The way that he would taste Newt’s skin, inch by inch - the way that he would show him, with soft hands and soft words, that anyone who had devalued him in the past was wrong, wrong, wrong - the way that Graves would kiss him, tasting each moan as it came and giving back as good as he got - those were the thoughts that plagued him in idle hours, when work was his priority, or when dreaming meant waking to stained sheets. 

 

Even duty, harsh mistress that she was, could not replace the calls of memory, the traces of it that plagued Graves every working hour - the way that Newt had sounded, crying out for him - the way that he had felt - the way that he had tasted. Each of his senses was on fire with memory, with the sweet burn of desire that had been fulfilled once but demanded another satisfaction, another sweetness.

 

Tina had foiled his attempts to corner Newt, to find him in some sort of relative privacy and coax a kiss from him - not once, but twice, and if he were a less fair-minded man, he would be sorely tempted to retribution. 

  
Graves was sensible enough - for now - to know that Tina had not intended to keep him from spending time with Newt, and to know that Newt, sweet innocent that he was, would never make the first move. Newt would never slip nude into Graves’ bed without invitation, without already being a firm fixture in Graves’ life - and so, as tempting as it was to imagine him there, to wake gasping and fulfilled from the thought of Newt’s sweet body and carnal moans - as tempting as it was, Graves knew that it was only a fantasy. He knew that the reality was his to pursue.


End file.
